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The Bold Female Spies of the Civil War
One woman baked a secret letter into a fruitcake. Another slipped Morse code into her knitting. But were they really “unsung heroes”?
During the Civil War, female spies on both sides of the conflict brazenly took advantage of the belief that they were too weak or timid for espionage.
Some seduced enemy officers or hid messages in their hoop skirts. Others knit Morse code into tapestries or arranged for the delivery of a fruitcake that had a secret letter baked into it instead of apples and raisins.
One woman disguised herself as a man to enlist in the Union army. She impersonated a female peddler with aplomb as she sneaked past Rebel lines in an attempt to gather facts for Gen. George McClellan about the strength of Confederate forces in Richmond.
Memorable details like these abound in historian Karen Abbott’s Liar Temptress Soldier Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War, which recalls the derring-do of four female spies and their accomplices who worked mainly in Virginia and Washington, D.C, from 1861–1865. One colorful story involves Elizabeth Van Lew, who lent her servant Mary Jane Bowser to the wife of Jefferson Davis so that she’d have a spy in the house of the Confederate president. When Mary Jane had…
